I like to find the pretty.

Outgoing Mail

03/27/2014

I'm still trying to get used to being out of the work force, not having somewhere I'm expected to be every morning, etc.

It's been quite a challenge to me, this current season of my life.

I'm finding my prayers every morning include at least one plea that I will not "lean on my own understanding" (which I often translate as 'living in my mind'), and another that I will be directed by the Holy Spirit into His plans for my day.

Today, those plans include boxing up a little flock of paper birds to send to another of His friends who is walking through a valley right now.

As I reached for a sheet of engineering plans to wrap the box, I heard a whisper, and immediately knew that I needed to wrap the box with the drawings to the outside, rather than the inside.

God wanted to remind me and my friend of something.

We have hope and a future.

Things sometimes get a little bleak in the here-and-now, but because of Jesus, the brightest future possible is our guarantee.

Once the paper was the correct size, I just followed these instructions:

Step 1. Fold your cover paper in a 'hot dog' fold (long edges together) with the front side facing out and make a nice crease with your bone folder.

Now, you might notice that my paper is upside down here, and that's important.

I made these next important creases all wrong (several times) when I was using paper which had text (or a design needing a particular orientation).

If you stick with me, you'll see that you need to be careful at this point if you are using paper like this for your cover.

Step 2. Open your paper and fold the bottom two corners in to meet the middle crease (I don't know why I had to confuse you by turning my paper upside down so that I had to fold the top two corners)....

...and press with your bone folder.

Step 3. Now fold the paper in a 'hamburger' fold, bringing the point to the center of the top edge like this...

...and press that bottom crease with your bone folder.

Step 4. Place glue dots or a small piece of double-stick tape (or a bit of glue) to hold the inner pockets closed...

...and fold your book closed along the original hot dog fold.

Your cover is almost finished!

Step 5. To make inner pages, hamburger fold a piece of copy weight paper, and crease along the fold.

Step 6. Now cut 1/4" off the folded edge like this...

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﻿...and a generous 1/4" off one short edge like this:

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﻿Step 6. Fold your pages (short edge to short edge) and crease.

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﻿You can make pages from any copy weight paper, and the beauty of this little notebook is that the pages can be replaced any time.

﻿If you happen to have a friend who loves graph paper every bit as much as you do, and you happen to be planning to give her a little notebook next time you see her, you might want to add some pages made from graph paper.

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﻿Step 7. You're going to snip a little bit off the cover at the folded corners, so the rubberband can meet and hold the inside pages in place.

﻿I center my inner pages along the outside of the cover and hold them in place while I snip off the corners...

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﻿...like this:

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﻿Step 8. Now just line the center creases of your inner pages up with the center crease of your inside book cover and slip a #19 rubberband into place like this:

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﻿Et voila!

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﻿You have a nice little refillable notebook!

﻿You can tuck a few index cards inside the pockets, too.

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﻿Do you love it?

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﻿Now, when we made these in 'class', we also made one which was not refillable.

﻿We used a needle and thread to sew the 'signature' of inner pages into the notebook.

I loved the fact that we could dress up the book by adding paper beads to the tails of the thread on the outside of the book.

﻿In fact, I loved it so much that I decided I couldn't do without it, even though I wanted this book to be refillable.

So, I just removed the pages, sewed the book cover together so I could add the beads, and then put the pages and rubberband back in place.

Now I really love it!

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(﻿ If you notice that I clipped the outer edges of my book cover, even though it wasn't necessary from a functional standpoint, well...it's just because I've got this problem with symmetry.)

Another wonderful thing about these little notebooks is that they fit perfectly into a standard A2 envelope so you can mail them (minus the beads, of course).

I made several for Me Darlin' Mither to mail to her friends (in a lot less time than it took me to write this post).

Think of the potential uses for a nifty little book design like this (Thank you, Miss B!).

What a kewl thing to make with kids the first day of a vacation or a week at camp so they could use it as a journal or an autograph book.

I'm really wanting to make some of these using old phone book or atlas covers for cover paper.

I think there is a lot of paper floating in and out of our lives which could be recycled with this project.

﻿I'm going to send one of these to you if you give me a suggestion for a recycled book cover for which I actually have the material on hand. offer expired 8/1/2011